Page 43 of Darkest Obsession

“Are you going to hit me again?”

“Maybe.”

“Can you turn the lights on so you can at least aim properly?”

“I think I hit you where you needed it.”

“Fuck’s sake, Clover. Lights. Please.”

My body hurts, and I’m bold to beg her for the slightest bit of mercy when she doesn’t owe it. Clover has plenty of reasons to whack me like this with a cricket bat. The only problem is, she’s not supposed to know that. Did she trick Sylvia into setting up this meeting so she could attack me? I hear her footsteps moving away from me and then the lights come back on.

She’s on the other end of the courts dressed in all black and wielding a cricket bat with the last name HARGREAVES written on it in a Sharpie.

She just stands there and watches me once the lights come on. I don’t move, not because I can’t, but because I don’t want to give her a reason to hit me again. If she tries this time, at least I can defend myself.

“Are you going to just stand there?”

“I don’t want you getting near me,” she snarls.

“What the fuck did I do?”

“Don’t play games with me, Thomas.”

She crosses the tennis courts back to where I stand, a few feet away from the net.

“That’s not a tennis racket. You’ve got the wrong sport,” I mutter, although it’s probably a bad time for a joke.

“You should have seen this coming,” she responds, which is the strangest bloody apology that I’ve ever heard.

“I’m going to bruise.”

“Good.”

She lifts the cricket bat to hoist it over her shoulder and I wince. Cricket bats are supposed to drag on the ground, but I don’t bother correcting her American confusion — and it’s not just because of the terrifying look in her eye.

“I’m not afraid of that thing,” I tell her. “I would have caught you eventually.”

“Cut the shit, Thomas. You’re the guy aren’t you.”

“What?”

When you grow up in a family as big as mine, you learn to wriggle your way out of trouble with a few simple steps. Clover takes her bat and whacks my thigh hard.

“OUCH!”

“Talk, English boy. The party. The dance studio. It was you, wasn’t it?”

Fuck. How the fuck does she know?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Haven’t I hit you enough?”

She hoists the bat high and I have no choice but to talk. She apparently doesn’t have a lick of hesitation about bludgeoning me. I gravely miscalculated.

“Clover…”

“Why did you do it?”